Bay 12 Games Forum

Today I found I had native platinum cut gems. But my embark has no metals, totally not valuable metals and absolutely not platinum at all. So what's happening here?

Turns out they're gizzard stones, and they came inside random hens and turkeys. Along with bauxite, saltpeter and some other rare minerals.
Talk about Golden Eggs Hen... ¡I've got Platinum ones!

¿Does this mean I can have a source of platinum gems if I import enough chickens? ( that's a question I've never thought I'd ask).

If you can trap some forgotten beast in an "airlock" room with bridges, arranging a fighting pit of the monster against invaders should be possible. Not that I ever managed to do it without fortress-extintion-level accidents.

I've found I enjoy the game a lot more when I have a goal tomy fort. Usually I dig into Legends Viewer to find an old feud, an atrocity to avenge or a personal motivation from my liege to start a new city focused on something in particular. When I achieve the city goal (that's it, if I don't fail miserably) I retire, feeling the deed is done and history moves on.

But sometimes I just like to think about new ideas and write down the ones I feel can be a good storytelling start. Not megaprojects, just enticing ideas
I cannot be the only one doing this, so, fellow players, what are your ideas for interesting fortress projects? I'll start myself:

Roleplaying winning conditions:

- MINING COLONY: The mountainhome needs gold, silver and most of all, iron and steel. Your task is to mine dry every metal vein (not counting adamantine), smelt the ore and send the metal bars to to your liege AS OFFERING. Once the metals are exhausted, you can retire.

- MANY MOUTHS TO FEED: Your civilization needs a stable income of food, and there's too many wars and other worries to deal with. Create a new city centered only in food production. The moment you are raised to a barony, send at least 50 barrels of raw food, 50 barrels of prepared food and 50 barrels of booze yearly, AS OFFERING. Once you hit 20 legendary cooks and 20 legendary brewers and send 100 barrels of raw / prepared / booze yearly you can retire.

- COASTAL FORTRESS: Pick a strategical spot on the coast and build a fortress focused on sea defense. It must have a a line of catapults across the curtain wall and battlements looking at the sea, a lighthouse tower and a dock for friendly ships.

- PYRAMID: Your king has the desire for a tomb like no other has been built, defying the skies and meant to last forever. Build a pyramid as high as possible in-game, with a hidden, impossibly luxurious burial chamber for the king and queen, and some others for their closest nobility. Stuff it with pedestals displaying artifacts, weapons, armor and the posessions needed for the afterlife. Also, a lot of masterful traps to discourage tomb robbers. Once the pyramid is finished, become the mountainhomes. When the king arrives, provide for his needs and retire.

- CLEANSE THE LAND: Necromancers are a plague that needs to be expurged from this world. Create a fort devoted to military purposes and train your warriors. The moment you are offered a barony, start sending raids to destroy every necromancer tower. Books and slabs carrying the secrets of life and death must be thrown in a magma chute set in a temple of your Life God. When every necromancer tower has fallen and their legacy destroyed, you can retire.

- TRAVELER'S HAVEN: pick a location next to a road belonging to you civilization, and build an outside tavern with 40 rooms for visitors, serving only drinks made by legendary brewers, with a stock of every instrument known in the world and a 10*10 dance hall. To grant order and security for the visitors and travelers, a jail and a well trained garrison of 20 soldiers is also required.
- HOLE IN THE WORLD: Your fort is built around a 10 radius hole that goes straight to the magma layer. Access to the lower levels is only descending a downward spiral ramp from the surface. If there's a river nearby, divert the stream to create an artificial waterfall.

- CITY OF GLASS: in an embark with enough sand, cover every tile of the map in green glass. Everything must be made of glass, from city walls to buildings to food containers to coffins, workshops and statues. If you build stuff underground you must cover the floors and make walls from glass. When you hit 200 citizens and you can retire the wonder city is finished and you can retire.

- MILITARY OUTPOST: The city is built with only one idea in mind: war. Every citizen must be part of a squad, with iron / steel equipment, and train to be a professional soldier. When you are granted a barony, you must start raiding enemy towns, either conquering them or razing them to the ground. When your raids or your defense against sieges hits a killcount of 1000 enemies (not counting war animals) you can retire.

Also, you can tweak the population trigger for invasions (default is ¿80?) so you become a target earlier (can't remember where it is, but I'm sure the wiki will tell you).

Once your place is really big and deep, it's convenient to have several dining rooms to avoid long walks.

Your magma smelter operator is hungry, but why should he ascend 120 z levels + corridors when there's a convenient dining hall every 20 levels or so?

Also, it allows for more customization, you can do theme dining rooms, plant statues of the deities associated with each work zone, etc.

This is how I do it, anyway. Probably it's in fact worse, but I like it. Like having several wells around.

Didn't paint the text green because I don't know if it's already been answered yet. If answered, a link would be much appreciated.

Other players have pointed the beautiful work made in Mark J Rohnson's Ultima Ratio Regum maps and buildings. Currently, Dwarf Fortress worldgen creates, let's say, less beautiful buildings.
I wandered around a necromancer tower in Adventure mode to find it's just a square tiny building of two Z-levels and a cellar. I confess I expected, well, a tower. Ruined fortresses are equally similar and not quite impressive in design and layout, specially compared to some players' fortresses posted around. No circular halls, no fancy designs, no throne rooms, offices or separated districts... they don't have the feel of an inhabited city suddenly attacked.

¿Are these locations going to be revisited to improve their looks and layouts? and ¿Is there (going to be) a way to mod worldgen to 'inject' player blueprints into worldgen?

Below there's a link to URR, not playable yet but you can walk around and see the cities and their districts (¿Is ok to add links here? sorry if it isn't). Worth a look if you haven't seen it yet.

I found a dead werebeast cursed dwarf doesn't turn into a ghost until it's back into dwarven form.
I got something like

"ghostly fish dissector turned into a dwarf!"
"ghostly fish dissector is haunting the fortress!"

Apparently they keep turning into beasts and back even dead, until someone memorializes them. The guy died in his flooded quarantine cell the moment he turned into a beast again, and I didn't recover the body.